As far as Mage rotation goes it’s pretty much the same, there’s even less needless talents in the Arcane tree so that’s nice. Let’s see Mage talents that are removed in Cataclysm.
Arcane Talents that were removed (15)
- Arcane Subtlety
- Arcane Focus
- Arcane Stability
- Arcane Fortitude
- Magic Absorption
- Magic Attunement
- Spell Impact
- Student of the Mind
- Arcane Shielding
- Arcane Meditation
- Arcane Mind
- Arcane Instability
- Arcane Empowerment
- Mind Mastery
- Spell Power
- Arcane Barrage (Becomes the Arcane mastery ability)
Fire Talents that were removed (11)
- Incineration
- Improved Fireball
- Burning determination
- World in Flames
- Flame Throwing
- Burning Soul
- Molten Shields
- Playing With Fire
- Empowered Fireball
- Fiery Payback
- Burnout
- Living Bomb (Became the Fire mastery ability)
Frost Talents that were removed (12)
- Frostbite
- Improved Frostbolt
- Frost Warding
- Precision
- Piercing Ice
- Improved Blizzard (got baked into Ice Shards)
- Arctic Reach
- Frost Channeling
- Frozen Core
- Winters Chill
- Arctic Winds
- Summon Water Elemental (becomes the Frost mastery ability)
- Chilled to the Bone
I don’t know why I listed them, I was bored.
People make a way bigger deal out of this then it ever needs to be. All it does is bake in the dumb talents and leave better and more interesting choices in its wake. Almost everyone these days just copy/cut/pastes specs anyway so it doesnt even matter. Mix/max mentality has already made it a wrap on why they would or wouldnt do it and they are going to do it.
I agree, just the tip of the iceberg though. I always likened WOTLK as being the Halo 2 of WoW, overpowered and fun, the best one. After that it just gets more balanced and too many changes… yuck.
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You know I’m pretty sure that most people consider Halo 3 to be the best Halo.
Pretty hyped about the Cata trees
It was the last good one. Everything went downhill after that. Activision ruined Halo. Just like they have ruined every company they have ever touched in the last decade and a half.
I don’t know, I recall people enjoying Reach and ODST.
Reach was amazing and I would argue was actually the best game in the series
On the other hand, I don’t recall ODST having much more than a cult fandom
I do think the current talent set up allows for SOME people to experiment and find new ways to play, but i twnd to agree. Once a new build is found evryong one just copies that with maybe some flavor talents swapped in and out. Which im glad they have, but it doesnt feel too different from the 3 row swap thing we had previously. Ur only changing a couple nodes per situation -usually- and most of the time it just changes aoe focus to fewer target focus.
Experiment is cool and all, but let’s be real.
Not a single self-respecting raider (which is probably like 97-99% of the playerbase) is going to abandon level 60 talent on purpose to experiment, unless their META BUILD is without that 60 talent. Which I don’t even know if there is one.
Not to mention, with the overhauled class designs, the need for OG talents is not even needed.
And maybe there are some odd ball specs out there, still template specs nonetheless, such as desto/demo or some pvp spec. Those only exist due to flaws in core class/spec designs. Cataclysm fixes most of these problems, eliminating the need for said specs.
We all get 60 talent. And sone Andy being like, “wElL i dOnT uSe dIvInE stOrm” or something dumb like this. I’m sorry Andy, how about we don’t balance the entire game around 1 scrub who wants to mess around with zero interest in the “real” part of the game?
97 to 99% of WoW players are self-respecting raiders at heart, apparently. I like that.
Fwiw, raiding is a small part of the entire game if you actually consider things like leveling and dungeons as things to enjoy instead of nonsense to just work through in the pursuit of a single goal. Caring about a single thing at level cap while ignoring any potential enjoyment out of everything else in the game just sounds like an incredibly tedious and boring way to play ANY MMO around.
I think that that, minus the raiding bit, is why people mess around with talents; as I’ve said before, while my endgame plan is usually “rep grind, then make an alt” I generally pick talents that look useful to the abilities I normally use; something like “Frost Ward has a chance to reflect Frost spells aimed directly at you” doesn’t sound particularly useful outside of extremely niche situations, so it gets ignored.
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Raiding is the height of PvE in WoW and since it is balancing should be based around that just like how PvP should be balanced from an arena.
Personally I think that it should be worked downwards, Raiding > dungeons > leveling is what I think the balancing priority should be.
No one has ever said anything about “enjoyment” and I don’t see how any of that ties into my earlier statement.
Feels like you want to argue just for the sake or arguing.
This couldnt have been any more pathetic. Leaving a game you put days worth of time in over talent trees?!?! What are you 5? If you are swayed but such mundane things maybe its best if you do leave cause you’re toxic to the community. Bugs cost on membership increase lack of updates all good reasons but a talent tree is probably the most pathetic thing I have heard besides random dungeon finder
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H3 was great but Reach was BiS for story and multiplayer.
plz not this nonsense about the journey again…
leveling has always sucked after the 1st time
I get the feeling that if that were the case, the Paladin ICC Tier set wouldn’t have had anything close to the effect it did since resetting the CD of Divine Storm wouldn’t have been an option. 
…That might be the problem, really. It doesn’t seem like a lot of raiders are playing for their own fun, but rather to effectively meet a quota of things they “should do,” whether it be in raids or otherwise.
That’s because Vanilla leveling was always two thousand breadcrumb quests and occasionally a dungeon run. Cata at least changes that since you can pick and choose which areas you level in between 1-60…at least until SL, anyway.
Actually SL made it even more pick and choose, not only could you choose whatever expansion you wanted but you can also level in any zone
and if you can’t make some dumb hybrid spec it will ruin leveling